What is a methods paper?
Dr. Alexandra Bernhardt • Juli 14, 2023
A methods or design paper describes the trial design of a clinical study, i.e., the research methods and data sources, of a planned trial in detail.
It is typically published shortly before the trial actually begins to inform the scientific community that a (usually large and significant) trial is going to be conducted in a particular therapeutic area. This scientific paper is basically the very essence of the study protocol. A research paper, on the other hand, discusses the methods and results obtained in a completed trial.
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The study design is the basis of the research project, i.e. the detailed plan of a particular study. After the research topic has been defined, the specific research question is formulated. The methods of the planned study are usually derived from this, such as the type of study, the design of the data collection, the determination of the evaluation and the presentation of the results.
Medical writing refers to the writing of medical texts, while scientific writing describes much more generally the writing of scientific texts from a wide variety of research areas. Medical writing can therefore be understood as a special thematically limited area of scientific writing.
Learn about the goals and quality criteria of quantitative research methods, which are based on measurement and statistics, and qualitative research methods, which aim to describe and understand social phenomena.